Pushing the bad away: reverse Tullock contests

Bettina Rockenbach (), Sebastian Schneiders and Marcin Waligora ()
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Bettina Rockenbach: University of Cologne
Sebastian Schneiders: University of Cologne

Journal of the Economic Science Association, 2018, vol. 4, issue 1, No 6, 73-85

Abstract: Abstract The literature on rent-seeking primarily focuses on contests for achieving gains, although contests for avoiding losses are also omnipresent. Examples for such ‘reverse’ contests are activities to prevent the close-down of a local school or the construction of a waste disposal close-by. While under standard preferences, investments in ‘reverse’ and ‘conventional’ contests should not be different, loss aversion predicts contests for avoiding losses to be fiercer than conventional ones. In our experimental data, the difference in investments between conventional and reverse Tullock contests is small and statistically insignificant. We discuss several explanations for this remarkable finding.

Keywords: Rent-seeking; Contest; Loss aversion; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1007/s40881-018-0052-7

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